When I heard the report that vitamin supplements do no good I immediately thought of the addition of folic acid to flour which has significantly reduced the incidence of anencephaly. Then I thought of all the fortified cereals, etc. Why are supplements being added if they are not useful? Of course, they are useful! It only takes common sense to know that the American diet is lacking in many important nutrients, and it only takes a little research to discover that supplementing those nutrients increases the health of those lacking in the nutrients! Sometimes I think the news media thinks we are totally ignorant and unable to draw our own conclusions.
The Media’s Profound Ignorance About Nutrition Misses the Mark Yet Again
November 25, 2013 | 50,677 views
By Dr. Mercola
According to researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research,1 vitamin supplements are probably useless when it comes to preventing heart disease and/or cancer.Their analysis is being used by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to update its recommendations on supplement use, and the findings were recently reported by NBC News2 under the headline: “Vitamins don’t prevent heart disease or cancer, experts find.”But is this really an accurate evaluation of the available evidence? A strong rebuttal3 to NBC’s reporting was immediately issued by Dr. Andrew Saul,4 editor of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service.Dr. Saul has over 35 years of experience in natural health education;Psychology Today named him as one of the seven natural health pioneers in 2006.“I would like to apologize for NBC News. It seems that the organization that brought us Lowell Thomas, John Cameron Swayze, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley has lowered its standard of reporting,” he writes.“NBC's supplement-bashing headline article... displays an ignorance of clinical nutrition that is difficult to ignore, and, thanks to its media prominence, can't be.Of vitamin supplementation, NBC specifically said that a ‘very extensive look at the studies that have been done show it may be a waste of time when it comes to preventing the diseases most likely to kill you.’ The ‘very extensive look’ encompassed 24 preselected studies. It looks like they just possibly may have missed a few...”
Dr. Saul ‘Apologizes’ for NBC ‘Hatchet Job’ Reporting on Vitamins
Dr. Saul then goes on to list 19 studies5 showing strong correlations between vitamin use and reduced risk of heart disease and cancer. If you’re in doubt, I suggest you to take a look at some of those studies before you swallow NBC’s “hatchet job on vitamins,” as Dr. Saul puts it. Below is a handful. For the full list, please see Dr. Saul’s article.6
- JAMA 2012:7 Multivitamin supplements were found to reduce cancer risk by eight percent.
- International Journal of Cancer 2011:8 A mere 10 ng/ml increase in serum vitamin D levels was associated with a 15 percent reduction in colorectal cancer incidence and 11 percent reduction in breast cancer incidence.
- American Heart Journal 2011:9 Each 20 micromole/liter (µmol/L) increase in plasma vitamin C was associated with a nine percent reduction in heart failure mortality. According to Dr. Saul, if everyone were to take 500 mg of vitamin C per day—the dose required to reach a healthy level of 80 µmol/L—an estimated 216,000 lives could be spared each year.
- International Journal of Cancer 2011:10 While the NBC declared that “Vitamin E does no good at all in preventing cancer or heart disease,” this study found that gamma-tocotrienol, a cofactor found in natural vitamin E preparations, decreases prostate tumor formation by a respectable 75 percent.
- International Journal of Cancer 2008: Here, 300 IUs of vitamin E per day reduced lung cancer risk by 61 percent.
Continue reading... here
No comments:
Post a Comment